Meet the Salangome Artisan

I am a native from Salango, Ecuador, a small fishing and diver's village. I come from a family of craftsmen. My father, my grandfather and my great grandfather were skilled craftsmen. They worked in materials like wood, Mother of Pearl Shell , Black Coral, and Carey, ( a shell of sea turtle color tortoiseshell). They used to make figures in the forms of fish, dolphins and sharks of these materials. My grandfather once lost one of his teeth and he replaced it by a wooden tooth Guayacán, that he made.

As he was poor man, he used to make some Guayacán´s wood doll to play her daughters (my aunts) when they were children. But the Guayacan is a very hard and heavy wood, the girls had to play very carefully because when the dolls fell to the feet of them, it was very painful.

All these activities were hobbies, not a living. They were farmers, fishermen and divers.

Since my childhood I developed the desire to work in the crafts, from watching my father and grandfather working at them.

When I was a teenager, I started making figures of Black Coral, and Carey. Then I started working with Mother of Pearl shell and Spondylus Shell

I traveled the rain forest, near the Amazon and the Sierra of Ecuador, looking for a family of craftsmen who made imitation of shrunken heads or Tsantsas using goat , or Llama / Alpaca skin. Finally I found them and could learn something about the work of them and then I continued to develop my own technique for making imitation of Tsantsa. Currently this activity allows me to support my family, my wife and my two children who are ten and eight years old. A friend also works with me as a helper.

About

The heads are all individually hand crafted from tanned and formed goat or alpaca skin and hair in Ecuador by a talented artisan using methods comparable to original tsantsa (head shrinking) as performed by the Jivaro tribes. The heads pictured are "models". Each tsantsa is an original masterpiece, no two are exactly alike. The detailing varies slightly, but not significantly. Each head comes with a jute hanger which can be easily removed if you prefer.